kaminomifandomcom-20200223-history
Kusunoki Kasuga
Character Overview Kusunoki Kasuga (春日 楠, Kasuga Kusunoki) is the successor to the Ancient Martial Art Kasuga-Style Life and Death Technique, and also a/the only member of the Women's Martial Arts Club at Maijima High. She is the fifth capture target. Personality Kusunoki is an upperclassman at Maijima High who is well respected for both her beauty and strength. Beneath her tough exterior as a young woman who has lived her entire life attempting to live up to expectations as the successor to a martial arts dojo lies a teenage girl who is actually attracted to and enjoys cute and girly things. Because of the fundamental dissonance between these two sides of her personality, Kusonoki chooses to deny the feminine part of her personality and entirely embrace the martial arts side of her life. Keima is able to help her to reconcile the differences between the two sides of her personality, both of which she ultimately accepts. Aside from this, she is also shown to have the utmost respect for her capricious elder sister, Hinoki Kasuga, who is a fashion designer that ran away to America. After her experiences with Keima, she is still shown to value martial arts, but has interspersed her life with the recurring cat from her arc, in addition to more feminine things, like placing a houseplant in the dojo. Ironically, this only improves the amount of respect she receives from her invariably male disciples at the dojo. History She is the successor of the Kasuga Dojo. She was the strongest in the dojo from an early age and adults of high rank could not defeat her. At the same time, she loved cute things. However, being the dojo's successor, she could not bring herself to accept cute things. As she saw cute things as being weak, and martial arts as being strong. Since she believed that she can only follow one road and sacrifice the other, she grew up believing she had to reject cute things. Though this did not stop her affection for cute things, which later manifested as a feminine version of herself. Plot Overview Kusunoki Kasuga Arc After rescuing Keima from the school delinquents, as Keima tries to walks away, Kusunoki complains to Keima that he is a male and is supposed to be able to save himself. Elsie appears, trying but failing to help Keima, she said that they were weak and she does not want to see them again. As she heads to her own classroom, Elsie's sensor went off, this was the first sign that she has a spirit inside of her body. When she arrived in her classroom she went to the balcony after seeing a cute cat. After scaring away the cat, a peice of paper flew at her. Grabbing the paper, she sees a drawing and found it to be cute. Later, Keima and Elsie observes Kunosuki practicing martial arts in the gymnasium. Despite Elsie telling Keima that it might be difficult for Keima to interact with Kunosuki, he decides to confront Kunosuki directly by asking to be her student. After some persuading by Keima, Kusunoki accepted him as her student, though officially he is known only as the manager of the women's martial arts club. One day, while she was changing her clothes in the gym locker room, she sees the same cat from before. Failing to chase away the cat this time, she was found hugging the cat when Keima entered the locker room after cleaning the gym. Surprised and angry that Keima discovered this side of her, she hits Keima and pushes him out of the room. Kunosuki then runs to the balcony with the intention of getting rid of the cat by literally throwing it into the air. However, the spiritual manifestation of her feminine self appeared at the last moment and saved the cat, much to the surprise of Keima and Elsie who were spying on Kunosuki in Elsie's magic cloth. Keima tells Kusunoki that he believes that her feminine spiritual manifestation will appear when she is exposed to cute things and that she should defeat it. Elsie suggested that they should go on a date, causing the spiritual manifestation to temporarily appear. A day later, at Maijima Wai Wai Road, Kusunoki, dressed in a beautiful dress made by Elsie, felt embarrassed that everyone is staring at her. Keima brings her to a video game store. Kusunoki on the other hand brings him to a sports store. They felt that they cannot connect with each other this way and decided to go to a game center where they challenged each other to a semi-physical game. Later, they went to the movies and Dezinisea Land. Towards the evening they went to the Night Public Park. However, despite all their efforts, they did not seem to be making much progress. Refusing to give up, Kusunoki eventually found a way to make the spiritual manifestation appear and challenged it to a fight. During the fight, Kunosuki found out that it was not as weak she assumed, and she had trouble defeating it. To Kunosuki's anger, Keima advice her to learn to accept the part of her that likes cute things instead of trying to defeat it by fighting. After some arguing, both the manifestation and Kunosuki was convinced by Keima to accept each other. The manifestation then went into Kusunoki's body and tries to force a kiss with Keima by controlling Kusunoki's body. Kusunoki and Keima both struggled to avoid the kiss, while the manifestation inside Kunosuki asks if she hates Keima. Realizing that she has fallen in love with Keima, Kunosuki allows the kiss, expelling the spirit from her body. After this, Kusunoki can be seen carrying a cute cat in her arm, while still believing in being strong. Sisters Arc Kusonoki reappears later when her freelancing older sister, Hinoki, reappears in town, and is revealed to have an escaped spirit within her heart. She plays a critical role in expelling the spirit, since the gap in Hinoki's heart was created primarily by her desire to maintain a facade as a superior and good older sister. Despite having forgotten about her own conquest (having had her memories modified as shoddily as Mio's), and Keima confirming that there is no Goddess within her, like most other conquests, she continues to display an element of attraction to Keima. Relationships Keima Katsuragi Originally she saw Keima as a worthless, weak individual, but later became attracted to him, even being made to go out on a date that her feminine side confessed to have enjoyed. However, since her memories were reformatted, she still recognizes Keima as the one who joined the Women's Martial Arts Club at Maijima for a short while, but other than an inexplicable reaction to seeing soft-serve ice cream, she does not seem to remember being conquered by him. Nevertheless, during the Hinoki arc, she displays elements of jealousy whenever Hinoki and Keima interact. Hinoki Kasuga She has the utmost respect for her older sister, referring to her as "Ane-ue." When she was a small child, she was surprisingly timid and looked up to her talented older sister, Hinoki, who looked out for Kusonoki whenever she could. She genuinely loves her older sister and tries to convince her to stay at home forever, but Hinoki vanishes off to pursue her own dreams. Shown in Hinoki's 4-koma, Kusunoki has so much respect, or maybe fear, for her older sister that she would do any requests she asks. The Cat The stray cat is a recurring minor character in Kusonoki's arc that she views as a symbol of all the weak, feminine things in her heart. Although she eventually attempts to remove the cat from her life by throwing it from an upper level floor of the school, she is shown to actually like the cat and eventually takes it in as her own. Others The students at her dojo (who are all hulking, muscular martial arts practitioners) apparently have the utmost respect for her, despite her being not only female but probably younger than all of them. Nevertheless, they seem to show some concern for her complete devotion to martial arts and are correspondingly delighted when she does such things as place a houseplant in the dojo, exclaiming that she has finally killed someone. However, they are also rather perverted towards her at times shown when they all support the idea of Hinoki advertising the dojo by putting up a poster, wherein Kusunoki is dressed up in a revealing bikini. Trivia * She likes strong things, hard-baked senbei (rice crackers), and cute things. * She dislikes weak things and brown sugar senbei. * The name Kusunoki comes from the Kusu Station (楠駅, Kusu-eki). * She was the fifth capture of keima. * It is revealed in Omake that Kusunoki can't resist the countdown of Hinoki. For example, Hinoki called and told Kusunoki to bring some rice-balls all the way to America and Kusonoki must confess to Keima within 10 seconds. * Her recent trouble is giving a cute name to the cat in her dojo. * The cause of the crevice in Kusunoki's heart was her conflicted feelings of becoming either masculine or feminine. Quotes * (To the Delinquents) "Attacking a defenseless person...That's not something a real man would do!!" * (To Keima) "You weak looking punk. You give me the creeps, we shall fix that!" * (To Keima) "There's no doubt about it, you were the one who was in the girl's karate club before." * (Thinking) "The strong must defend the weak!" Category:Female Characters Category:Maijima